Are Mistakes Personal Failings Or Organizational Ones?

The Work Place

January 14, 2002|By JAMES HEAPHEY Columnist

Q: "In a recent column, you said that most mistakes are results of faulty systems, not faulty people. Obviously, individuals screw up sometimes. At what point do you blame a person for his mistake?" Software engineer, Newport News.

A: Before you think of an error as caused by a person, analyze it. There are many reasons that mistakes happen, ranging from lack of training to fatigue to communication breakdowns to poorly written or non-enforced policies. If you just blame an individual and move on, you miss an opportunity to fix a problem in the system. And it's not fair to the person whom you fingered.

"Who's responsible?" -- rather than "What happened here?" -- is the normal response to error. That's why learning how to avoid blame is a vital skill in higher management. Consultants will tell you that when they're called in to look at a company blunder, the first signal that they often get is to not assign it to those who hired them.

It's not easy for a company to replace the blame game with analysis. People are so used to "pinpointing responsibility," they behave in ways that derail analysis. Leadership must establish an organizational culture based on "mistake analysis," in which everyone believes that finger-pointing isn't dead -- but that it doesn't precede analysis.

Management should state "mistake" policy clearly and stay involved in enforcing it. Finger-pointing is more natural than analysis, so management training is required. The biggest challenge is getting management to be honest and objective enough to admit that a mistake could be the result of management itself.

Even when analysis pinpoints an individual, there are some tough questions to ask before you decide on what action to take. Perhaps the person is inept because he's been "promoted to his level of incompetence." What do you do about the person or people who selected him?

Blaming individuals and holding them responsible will always be necessary, but your goal is to shift from systems that set people up for failure to systems that support people.